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MP 1,1-5,1 cMP 5.1 no booting

flat4

flat4

Contributor
Original poster
Jul 14, 2009
294
85
Yes I search the forums and have tried what has been suggested, but it has not corrected the issue. Its going to be a long read as I am trying to give as much detail as possible.

A little background its a 2010 dual, upgraded to dual x5680, 32GB ecc and the video card is a amd 7950 (does show the boot screen) I bought it second hand and since I've had it when I powered it on it would take anywhere from 15 to 40 seconds before it chimed. Not sure why.

I am using MLO opencore with montery (nvme via owc adpater) it works, I also have a drive with mojave (sata ssd slot 3), and windows 11 (sata ssd slot 4) all have been working. I used a cheap KVM to flip between this 5,1 and 3,1 that runs proxmox. A quirk that I discover is that if i used the KVM to go from the 5,1 to the 3.1 and left it on the 3,1 for an extended period the 5.1 would just stop responding no ping, no video, nothing. Sometimes a force reboot would get it going. However in a few occasions this did not work I had to pull out the nvme and the windows drive to let it boot to mojave and they reinstall the drives and it booted to Monterrey via opencore.

What happen
Updated Monterrey to 12.7 and it ran with no issues it ran for several days. Powered off the tower and went about my business.
Last night press the power button and it powered up but nothing else happened.
I have no boot chime. I have a white light, no diagnostics lights. fans run. I removed the drives, no boot, exchange gpu to a gtx680 still nothing. Tried to reset the nvram and held the keys for more that 2 minutes never got the chime.
Reset the cpu tray and still nothing.

When i power up it up I do see the ram leds flash like they normally do. I have not tried removing the coin battery.

I've tested the 7950 and gtx680 in a pc and they are good. Connected the both sata drives and they showed up on my trashcan so don't believe its the storage.

any other suggestions I would appreciate
 
Tried to remove the RTC battery? Powering up without it makes the firmware to ignore the NVRAM.
 
tsialex said:
Tried to remove the RTC battery? Powering up without it makes the firmware to ignore the NVRAM.
Click to expand...
Tried no change. reinstall the RTC battery

I found a different post here that Macschrauber posted to about pressing the diag button while powering the tower.
pressing diag I get a amber light on the fourth led from the top. I could not tell which one as its dark in my room and i wear glasses for a reason. I did this while the tower was off. I held the diag button and powered on and kept holding it. I got as chime, kept holding but never got video.

Turn the it off press the power and got the chime and let run but never got the folder with the question mark. So i went ahead and install my mojave ssd and turned it on and the weird thing happened. When the chime started to play it pause and then played and stop. Like the chime was buffering still nothing. I left it running.

This morning I tried again and I am getting the chime but its boot looping and never get video.
I turned it off and unplugged the power.
 
Disconnect/remove every disk/PCIe card/DVD but a working disk with a macOS install and the GPU, remove the battery and try again. Seems something is damaged and making the POST procedure to fail.

Can you test your GPU with another Mac Pro or a PC to be sure that is working? You will have to test each part and be sure that is really working until you find the real culprit.
 
tsialex said:
Disconnect/remove every disk/PCIe card/DVD but a working disk with a macOS install and the GPU, remove the battery and try again. Seems something is damaged and making the POST procedure to fail.

Can you test your GPU with another Mac Pro or a PC to be sure that is working? You will have to test each part and be sure that is really working until you find the real culprit.
Click to expand...
I will do that, yes GPU tested good, installed on ubuntu machine and every output displayed video
 
Well removed all the extras and performed as suggested. I am back at square one, powers up no chime.

I do have the original AMD 5770 and El Capitan I could try that next.
 
Even with the RTC battery removed? Did you reset the SMC?

Do you have a MATT card?
 
I do not have a Matt card
Yes the rtc battery was in and I have reset the smc

But I will try again without the rtc
 
No luck only items connected were ssd gpu, usb installer and keyboard.
No chime not video
 
Did you tested without the SSD? A defective SATA device can make a Mac Pro not to POST.

Do you have another Mac Pro to test the CPU tray and PSU to eliminate both as the source of the problem?
 
tsialex said:
Did you tested without the SSD? A defective SATA device can make a Mac Pro not to POST.

Do you have another Mac Pro to test the CPU tray and PSU to eliminate both as the source of the problem?
Click to expand...
On the SSD I connected to my trashcan and erase the drive, I can connect it again and write data to it. I also can try a different SSD and I do have rust spinners that I can also try. I do have another mac but its a 3,1.

I do have a single cpu tray for a 5,1 but it has a bent corner that I need to fix so it will slide in.
 
flat4 said:
On the SSD I connected to my trashcan and erase the drive, I can connect it again and write data to it. I also can try a different SSD and I do have rust spinners that I can also try. I do have another mac but its a 3,1.
Click to expand...

I doubt that is the issue, but you are doing the process of elimination, so, try without any SATA devices or any PCIe cards but the GPU and see if the Mac Pro completes POST.

flat4 said:
I do have a single cpu tray for a 5,1 but it has a bent corner that I need to fix so it will slide in.
Click to expand...

Time to repair it, it's just 9 or 10 screws and is easy to bend it back.
 
I got my tray fixed, why did they put a screw under the heat sink?? Had to repaste, it needed it.
Slid it in power up with the 7950 and I got chime no video.

Powered it off , took the 7950 and used the original 5770.
I got a chime and a missing os screen. I will start with El Capitan since possible the bootRom is not where it can see the metal GPU.

I will put the rtc battery back in and start the install process. Unless I need to do something else?
 

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You can continue testing.

This is becoming more and more a combo of issues, you probably have a marginal PSU (you Mac Pro seems to need some time off to work) and something going on with the BootROM, maybe a corrupt NVRAM volume.
 
Got to mojave with the correct gpu, i have not added the usb 3 card or nvme but it seems to be working

I presume since I go this far there must be something wrong with the dual cpu tray. Where can i start to figure out what could be the issue.
 

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should I install the dual cpu tray to see if it will boot if not what can I do to troubleshoot the dual CPU tray
 
You can sure try the dual CPU tray.

There is nothing to do with the CPU tray besides repasting the northbridge heatsink plus the CPUs and thoroughly cleaning it everywhere. The oily residue from the thermal pads degradation + dust becomes a conductive gunk over time, you really need to clean it. IPA + lots of cotton buds and a lot of patience removes it.
 
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Just an update
Reinstall my nvme with Monterey
Ssd with win 11
USB 3 pci card and dvdrw

And its working , thanks for the help

Will post an update once I get the other cleaned.
 
ZAK1813 said:
I think I have the same problem as you (Here ) and same as this thread : Valdaquende

Big thanks to @tsialex as always.
Click to expand...
I have not cleaned my dual cpu yet, but installing the single cpu that I happened to have has solved the issues. Its running a little slower but its running.

I did read yours and Valdaquende post, what was different is that i never got the chime or lights on the backplane.

I did discover that my amd 7950 is not flashed, when i purchased it I was going to flash it but when i installed and booted up on a system with MLO opencore it displayed a boot picker. So I assume that it had been flashed. I realize that it wasn't when I installed the amd 5770 and got the white screen and apple logo and then it move on to the OS. when I installed mojave it was black until the login screen that when I knew it wasn't flashed.

I will be doing flash at a later time.
 
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I have no chime and SYS PG led is off. @tsialex has said : ‘If the CPU tray is not reliable, you won't have reliable results for the DIAG button.’

So you can ignore led diagnostic I think.
 
Apple ASD/AHT/DIAG LEDs presume that you still have a factory configuration hardware, not necessarily the RAM and disks from factory, but an AppleOEM GPU is required for the tests or it will fail.

Another thing, the diagnostic LEDs are dependent on an AppleOEM GPU being present and working, so, the EFI_DONE and GPU_OK are not reliable when you have a non Apple GPU installed.
 
tsialex said:
Apple ASD/AHT/DIAG LEDs presume that you still have a factory configuration hardware, not necessarily the RAM and disks from factory, but an AppleOEM GPU is required for the tests or it will fail.

Another thing, the diagnostic LEDs are dependent on an AppleOEM GPU being present and working, so, the EFI_DONE and GPU_OK are not reliable when you have a non Apple GPU installed.
Click to expand...
Thank you, I did not know that.
 
I cleaned the dual tray and repasted everything and went for it. That was a long 15 seconds and I got a chime and boot up!

We will see what happens

Thanks for all the help.
 
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